


Tecum habita

by amoama



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 20:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12239682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: Susan is spending a long afternoon studying in an Edinburgh library when a strange cat appears.





	Tecum habita

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts).



There’s a storm today; wind howling, gales blowing. Still, she decided not to bother with the local bus for such a short distance. Susan relishes it, even as she tips her head forward, grips her books tighter to her chest and scampers from her university digs over the George IV Bridge to the public library. The rain just about holds off and she makes it into the atrium of Edinburgh’s grand old Central Library without being soaked to the bone. She hears the rain begin pounding the pavement behind her and she turns to watch it as the heavy doors swing closed. Quick as the lightening flashing behind it, a cat whips through the last gap before the library door shuts, its reverberations lost in the thunder of the heavens outside. 

The cat comes to a delicate standstill directly in front of Susan. It regards her briefly, forming some sort of assessment and then brazenly shakes all the moisture from its distinctive tortoiseshell fur. Susan jumps back a little to avoid the spray and as she does so the cat takes the opportunity to speed past her, disappearing up the library’s staircase as if the lightning could still reach it. 

“Well,” Susan says, rather affronted, “I like that.” And she does. She’s smiling to herself just a little as she makes her way up the stairs. She climbs until she reaches the reference reading room. It’s her favourite part of the library. Usually because the light up here is so good, streaming through long windows surrounding the domed room, but today the sky is dark and the evening lights have had to be put on early. 

She settles at a desk, the room is close to empty, not many souls have braved the weather to get here today. She collects her required reading and tries gets lost in her studies, despite the rattling windows protesting the weather’s ill treatment. She puts her head down, focuses on _Mathematical and Physical Principles of Engineering Analysis_ , tries to let the storm soothe her, subconsciously tuning her breathing to the steady rainfall. 

Perhaps hours pass. The darkness of the day makes it hard to keep track. Her hand hurts from note-taking though and she feels a little hungry. Soon she’ll go hide in the ladies room and eat her sandwich. Although, she’s alone here now so she might risk staying put to eat today. She feels lulled into a strange trance-like state. The sense of nature battling to reach her reminds her of something, some other, lost, world. It feels like something she should resist but she can’t quite remember how to. She feels a sense of guilt. She should really go to the ladies room and freshen up, check that her curls and lipstick withstood the storm. Probably they didn’t. 

She’s about to force herself to move when she spies the cat again, watching her and moving quietly around the corner of the room. Susan studiously ignores it until eventually it makes its way to Susan, noses at her leg and then leaps up onto the desk, settling itself over _Engineering Analysis_ and inspecting her work. 

“Well, really,” Susan exclaims, “how am I to keep reading with you sat there?” she asks. 

The cat turns to stare pointedly at her. She has a flash of memory, a large mouse-like face giving her a similar look. 

“I was working you know,” Susan adds, defensively, not certain why she is justifying this to the cat. 

The cat all too-knowingly shifts slightly to the edge of the desk and Susan feels she has no choice now but to keep working, having required the cat to move. She mutters as she reads now, thinking aloud as she goes and the cat listens obligingly. Susan would like to pet the cat but knows that could be the height of rudeness, not having been given permission. Her left hand twitches a little, and her heart aches strangely, missing the feel of a soft, lush mane and the vibrancy and strength of the animal beneath it. 

“Oh gosh,” she says, sitting back from her desk. For no reason she feels overcome and quite close to tears. 

“I won’t be a moment,” she assures the cat, and dashes from the room down the hall to the ladies. 

Once there she looks herself sternly in the mirror. _Really, Susan Pevensie,_ she tells herself, _this childishness does not become an engineering undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh_. She wipes her eyes, although they have not leaked, and rifles through her purse for her lipstick. She applies that small piece of armour, thinks determinedly of her heroine, the inventor Hedy Lamarr, and forces herself to re-establish her sense of self. 

Ready, she feels oddly anxious about returning to the reading room, as if her books and a cat could be too much to face. “This really won’t do,” she says, and strides forth down the hall.

It isn’t a tortoiseshell cat awaiting her at her desk, however. It’s a young woman, a tall, elegant, handsomely-cloaked Scots woman, staring away from her out over the city. Susan moves cautiously towards the desk. 

“Hello,” she says, “Can I help you? Were you looking for something?” 

“No, thank you, I was just escaping the rain.” The woman tells her, and then adds as a second thought, “Do you mind me joining you?” 

Susan doesn’t think she minds. “Did you see the cat?” she asks. 

The woman smiles, dipping her head in private amusement. “Yes,” she says, “the cat’s gone now.” 

“Oh, well, no, I don’t mind. Do you want a sandwich? It’s just jam.” She offers, feeling she ought, as she’s terribly hungry herself. 

“Thank you, that’s kind,” the woman says. She’s very young looking, maybe just 18 or 19 but Susan doesn’t think the word ‘girl’ would do her justice. 

Susan reaches into her bag and takes out her packed snack, handing a triangular sandwich to the woman. “I’m Susan Pevensie.”

“Minerva McGonagall, nice to meet you.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Susan says between bites, maybe her hunger was why she was feeling funny. That and the weather and a strange cat. 

“Pevensie isn’t a wizarding name is it, down in England?” Minerva enquires. Susan chokes a little on her jam sandwich. 

“Oh, excuse me,” Minerva says hastily, “I just don’t remember you from school but I’m usually pretty good at differentiating from Muggles, otherwise I wouldn’t ask outright like that. I thought maybe you were a squib or something? But I was trying not to be rude, I’m sorry to distress you.” 

Susan is a little confused. There are just a few too many local Scottish words for her to make out Minerva’s meaning. 

“Have some mead to help?” Minerva is offering her a goblet of golden ale. Susan has no idea where it materialised from. She swallows some though, to help clear her throat. It has a rich, honeyed quality to it that instantly soothes her. 

“Gosh, that’s magic, thank you. So, umm, did we go to the same school?” she asks, sticking to the part she understood. 

“Well, that’s what I was wondering I suppose, but here you are studying Muggle ‘engineering’,” the last word is emphasised with some disparagement, Susan feels. 

“Women can, you know,” she says, “Hedy Lemarr is a leader in the field of wireless communication, although it’s not very well known.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t know,” Minerva says, “Is she a witch?” 

“Certainly not!” Susan says, affronted. “She’s an actress!” 

There’s an uncomfortable kind of pause. Susan knows she’s sort of glaring and the woman, Minerva, is looking at her as if she is a great mystery. Susan doesn’t like it. She is not in a position to be unravelled. 

There’s a crash of thunder above and the window frames shudder a little too hard for comfort. Their eye contact falters and then reconnects. Minerva appears to soften slightly. By unspoken consent they both sit down at the desk. 

“Thank you for the sandwich,” she says, “it was delicious. Apologies for asking blunt questions. It’s the Presbyterian in me.” 

The thunder rolls again, and Susan has that feeling of being far away, in a lost world. She shivers a little. She remembers Lucy telling her about a ship heaving in the middle of a churning sea for 12 long days, of sailors washed overboard. She remembers not really believing her. She remembers trying to picture her family and friends surviving that without her and how much it hurt not to be able to help. She is adrift in a sea of strange memories. 

Susan regards Minerva carefully. The woman (the witch?) has her hair coiled beautifully at the back of her head; the style is very old fashioned, however much it suits her. Her cloak, a deep purple, is wrapped around her as a gown, a strong collar guarding her long neck. She could be from another time completely. From another place. Susan thinks perhaps she wore a court dress like it once. The thought occurs to her, this woman could be a queen.

“Where are you from?” Susan asks. She holds her breath, waiting for the answer, suddenly sure she’s about to hear the name of a land she has resolutely not thought of for years. 

“Halkirk, in Caithness,” is the answer. 

“Oh,” No, then, “Oh, I see, John O’ Groats land?”

“Yes, not far.”

“Caithness,” Susan says vaguely, thinking, “the kingdom of the cat people?”

Minerva’s smile is a little wicked, “That is where the name came from.” 

Susan cannot help but notice how Minerva’s green eyes flash, piercing Susan just like her tortoiseshell visitor earlier. 

“You’re... a witch?” She asks, preferring to just come out with it.

“I suppose I have rather given the game away,” Minerva says. 

“A witch with a tortoiseshell cat?”

“I’m familiar with the cat.” 

Susan notices how vaguely she answers the question. It puts her on guard. Slowly, hesitantly, she admits, “I knew a witch once.” 

“Oh yes?” Minerva asks, interested, “I thought you must have done.” 

Susan doesn’t quite know why she’s letting herself get dragged into this conversation, why she can’t leave the past behind. But then, here she is, faced with someone clearly familiar in some way with that past, here in Central Library. Someone who possibly followed her here. She was always the most practical Pevensie and she’s not one to deny what is right in front of her eyes. 

“I didn’t meet her here, this witch, and she was not... a friend.” 

“Oh dear, a bad experience was it? I’m surprised you remember it. Did nobody try to remove your memory of it, if you’ll excuse the question?”

It’s not so strange a question. Susan hadn’t known that was an option. “I’m not sure. It’s not something I try to remember. Although not because of Jadis, she was defeated, after all.” 

“Jadis?" says Minerva, excitedly, "I think there was mention of a troublesome Jadis back in Rowena Ravenclaw’s time who tempted Helena to steal the diadem but she was banished or disappeared and was never heard from again.”

That’s too much information for Susan to digest at once, “I don’t know, really, how she ended up in Narnia,” she says slowly, deliberately naming her beloved home, letting the pain of that run through her, the anguish no less piercing for being expected, “They said she was from a kingdom called Charn, but she stayed a long time and she brought winter with her.” 

“Next time I visit the Hogwarts library I’ll look her up,” Minerva says. 

Susan nods, she’s too flooded with visions of the past to answer. She isn’t thinking of the white witch really at all. She’s thinking of all her Narnia friends, of Aslan, of Caspian, of her own singular diadem of soft silver flowers. 

“I didn’t know there were witches here,” she says, “outside of Narnia.” 

“I’ve not heard of Narnia, I’m afraid,” Minerva says.

“No,” Susan says, “it’s not well known, it’s quite hard to get to you see. It’s, sort of, another world. I went there during the war.” 

“Ah,” Minerva exhales, comprehending, “a rift to another place. That is very ancient magic. It would take a world war, I suppose, to expose such a road.”

“And yet it was just through the wardrobe.” Susan is full of wonder once more, for all that she has longed to forget, knowing that all the roads are closed to her now. 

“It must be strange for you,” Minerva says with compassion, “to live without magic having known it once? A grief, like a lost love.” She sounds as though she knows something of that. 

“Yes,” says Susan, “in a way, the world has less possibility now, I sometimes feel. But then, here I am, studying applications for piezoelectric materials and the possibilities seem endless again.”

“That does sound like it could be a spell.” Minerva admits ruefully, “I’ve never really thought of the Muggle world that way, it didn’t seem like that when I was growing up.”

“No?”

“No, I’ve always had magic but I didn’t know anything about it until I went to school at 11. I could never go back to living without it now.” 

Susan smiles, sadly. She hasn’t had a choice. 

“Could you do me some magic now, do you think?” She asks, hesitantly. “Something small, something nice.” Just something to warm her soul a little. 

“Certainly,” Minerva says, “I’m fully qualified now,” she adds not without pride. She takes out a wand which Susan eyes a little covetously. Minerva holds it with the same care and competence that Susan once held a bow, her elegant and powerful weapon. Minerva murmurs something that sounds roughly like “cacaua-atl” and before her appears two mugs of chocolate. Susan watches Minerva first, then takes a sip, it’s spicy and hot. The warmth permeates through her, a literal manifestation of her wish. It’s a precise and perfect piece of magic. 

Susan repeats the spell words, quietly to herself. 

“It’s a newish spell for Britain,” Minerva says, “but a nice one.”

“Yes,” Susan agrees, “Thank you.” 

“Will you tell me?” Minerva asks, “about Narnia?” 

About Narnia. Susan closes her eyes. Will she ever be free of this longing for a world on the other side of a closed door? Somehow it always seems to reach her, no matter how far from that door she runs. 

“Alright,” she says, “I’ll talk while the storm lasts.” She takes a sip of the spiced chocolate and begins. 

Minerva listens, nodding at points, when she talks of the centaurs or giants, things Susan would have expected her to be surprised at. She frowns a little at the mention of prophesy and Susan brushes over the details. Occasionally she repeats things Susan says, “daughters of Eve”, “the diadem”, “Cair Paravel”. When Susan attempts to put Aslan into words Minerva draws a quickly stifled breath, “you follow a lion,” she says. Susan merely nods and keeps talking, explaining haltingly, as best she can, how much more than a lion Aslan is. 

When the rain hitting the windows lessens Susan looks up, it’s dark out now because of the late hour rather than the storm. The sky is beginning to clear, so that Susan can see a few faint and distant stars. No one has come to disturb them, Susan realises. But still, it’s time to end her tale.

“My brothers and sister love to gather together and talk about their adventures,” she admits, “but I can never join in. I can’t live in the past like that.”

“It hurts too much,” Minerva says.

“Yes, I feel cowardly to admit it though. Magic like that should be celebrated.” 

“Yes, we have forgotten too much of our history and yet your story proves how strong the ancient magic is, how great a part it still plays in our lives.” 

“It’s strange for me to think of it that way but it still has a pull on me, that’s clear,” Susan says.

“What will you do now?” Minerva asks her. 

Susan frowns at her, “Now I know magic exists here too? I don’t know. It’s comforting I suppose, but it’s still not my world. I’m working on a new magic now, what would you call it, a Muggle magic?” 

Minerva laughs, “You’ll have the magic world up in arms if you start saying that.” 

“Well, then, I’ll just keep working for my Baccalaureus Scientia then, I wouldn’t want to cause a fracas.” 

“Another spell?”

“A university degree. I need to be qualified too.”

“Education is important. It sounds like a good plan.” Minerva encourages. 

Susan smiles, because, yes, it does. One she made a long time ago, and now she’s starting to see it through. 

“Don’t become too much of a Muggle though, Susan Pevensie,” Minerva says rather severely, “Magic saturates your history, your being; magic of a deep, strong kind. You may need it again someday.” 

“You’re kind to listen to me, thank you.”

“Oh, don’t thank me, it was my privilege. If I didn’t think you would hate it, I would ask to write it down. It’s an important part of the magical discourse. But it would invite an obliviate charm from the ministry, that’s for certain.” She hesitates, looking girlish for the first time. “I’ll just ask, there’s one man, a teacher. He’s the most honourable man I know, he would want to know about this strong magic and I think he would treat your story as sacred. May I tell him?” 

“Alright,” Susan agrees, she trusts Minerva, probably a little more than is sensible, but she just knows she can. Still she says, “Don’t tell him my name, please.” She doesn’t want to be sought out by magicians.

“Thank you,” Minerva says solemnly. 

“Perhaps my sister would want to talk to him though,” Susan offers, thinking suddenly of Lucy, “Shall I mention it to her?” She can only imagine the look her sister will give her if she admits talking to a witch in a public library but perhaps it would be an olive branch between them. 

“Thank you, Susan, yes please.” 

They swap addresses. 

“If you find an owl knocking at your door, it’ll be from me,” Minerva says. 

“Oh, gosh, I see.” Magic is so different here. Owls in Narnia probably wouldn’t want to be thought of as postmen. “Normal mail too mundane?” 

“It might be,” Minerva replies, “depends where I am, you see. Although, I shall be heading to London soon, so I suppose I could correspond the Muggle way from there.” 

“Yes, I suppose you could,” Susan says, a little arch. This casual use of magic hasn’t really sunk in for her. Magic is for broken stone tablets, for falling through worlds, for talking animals and horns that summon help from lost monarchs. Magic is serious and strange and full of heartbreak. This, this is different, this everyday magic, easy to dismiss as sleight of hand. But that’s what she’s learning, she supposes. That’s why she’s studying engineering, that’s what she’s appreciating in Minerva this afternoon: there are so many different kinds of magic. Her life is interwoven in these threads and perhaps she can try to follow one strand without so fully rejecting the rest. 

“I would like to correspond,” Minerva says, a little waveringly.

Susan looks up at her, setting aside her thoughts for later. “Yes,” she says, “I, too. I’m... very glad we met today.”

“And I, I’m glad I followed you in out of the rain!”

“Well, goodbye,” Susan holds out her hand to shake. Minerva takes it but, surprisingly, uses it to pull Susan into a hug. Susan almost falls into her embrace, crushed against the cool sleek satin of the gown. 

“Next time we meet,” Minerva says softly next to her ear, “you have my permission to pet me a little.” There’s a light kiss to her cheek and then the witch disintegrates in Susan’s arms, becoming the cat once more. She rubs comfortingly across Susan’s legs for a brief moment and then pads quietly from the room, leaving Susan to gather up her books in amazement and head out into the chilly Edinburgh evening.


End file.
